Election Reform

as it would have been for Republicans four years ago.

But... BUT... BUT...

This is not the sort of thing we can move into slowly. Ballots are complicated enough already, and adding some sort of ranked choice might be asking too much of people. Maybe, just maybe... it could work in a primary in some states, but never in a general.

My ballot in this town will have at least 6 party lines (maybe more because "parties of convenience" keep popping up) with candidates crossing lines. It may also have two Council slots open, with candidates crossing party lines, and a half dozen judges with 8 or 9 lawyers running for those 6 slots. And all the rest of the state and county stuff.

The BoE and the parties have to know the line vote because Libertarians, Working Families and other tiny parties depend on turnout to stay on future ballots.

Aside from that, there's already a certain amount of confusion with the ballots we already have. Asking people to rate candidates on a scale like those online surveys ( "Did your salesperson Angela answer your question? Answer on a scale of 1 to 5" ) may be a bit much. Besides the crabs who complain about everything, we have a lot of elderly and invalids, some blind who bring assistants, and this could be overwhelming.

Mathematically, it sounds great, but I have a real problem with implementing it.